The longer you and I stay away, the more difficult it will be to return. We won’t be the same people; we will have had too many experiences. Remember, when I travel, I only observe and I try hard not to interact with anyone. But together, living life in the wrong time, we will. So the longer we’re away, the more likely it’ll be that I’ll be found and you’ll be stuck.”
He watched me as I tried to think about what it really meant. It should have been scary, yet I felt quite calm. It didn’t take me long to realise that there was something far worse than unexpectedly being alone in the wrong time and place and I took a deep breath before explaining it to him. It was important to me that he understood exactly what I meant.
“If we go back now, there won’t be an ‘us’” I said. “You’ll have to go back to your life and I will have to go back to mine. You won’t pop in and see me over the years, because you’ll think that it would be unfair and that it would stop me moving on and living my life properly or whatever. But in a funny way, I feel like I’ve always been waiting for you. And I’ll continue waiting; no matter what you think is right or fair. I took your hand last night and stepped into the unknown. I made my decision then and that decision stands, no matter what happens in the future... or in the past, given what we’re about to do” I said, stopping for a moment to think about what I’d just said, then continuing more slowly.
“Anyway, the point is I won’t regret it and I’ll never regret us. I really can be very sure about that. Being with you Jack... well it feels right, it has done from the moment I met you.”
He gathered me into his arms without saying a word, then after a little while we stood up slowly and went to the window.
“Ready?” he asked again.
He held onto one side of the thick fabric and told me to take the other. I took a deep breath, nodded and together we pulled the curtains back and let the pale morning light of December 1888 into the room.
We were on the ground floor and I could see out onto the street. There was a small front garden and iron railings about fifteen feet away from the window. The first thing I noticed was that there were no parked cars. Stupid cow I thought, of course there are no cars, but to see nothing at all on the street was very weird. There was a small park, also with iron railings and on the other side of it were more houses; rather grand looking, with three floors, if you included the attic.
Further down the street I could see a small group of people standing next to a horse and a low cart. I couldn’t quite see what they were doing, but they appeared to be buying something. Then I realised that the tall metal things on the cart were milk churns. It must be the milkman I thought, suppressing a giggle.
The room we were in was large. It had a high ceiling with ornate plaster coving and in the centre was a chandelier, suspended from a rose. I realised that this house must be the same as those on the other side of the park.
“Wow! Are we rich in this life?” I asked.
“No,” he laughed, “Never rich. We can’t mingle with the great and the good; or the great and the bad come to that, because we might inadvertently influence something. This is a ‘safe house’ as we call it. In a few days there will be a fire caused by a gas leak and the interior will be gutted, destroying everything. Last week a family was living here, but they’ve moved away. It will always exist for us, for this one week and a day and here we have everything we need to blend into this time.”
As he stopped speaking, he let his side of the curtain fall back down and became serious.
“Grace, we have to move with the masses. We can’t have big houses and servants and a fancy lifestyle, no matter which time we go to; it would be too easy to find us. Those social circles are always narrow, even in your own time. This house has servants, but they only come in the afternoon to clean and air the place. They also light the fires for the new family they believe may arrive in the evening. We try not to meet them, not here or in any of the safe houses.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“Jack I wouldn’t know how to fit into those circles in my time, let alone in any other. I’ve always been happy to be ordinary; I’ll just be happier being ordinary with you. I’m sure we won’t have any trouble finding some sort of work that won’t draw attention to ourselves. We’ll get by just fine, just you wait and see.”
“Ah, well there I do have some good news. I don’t think we’ll have to work, not as you mean it anyway. Popping back and forth in time means we will always have something to sell and there is always money in the safe houses. We should have enough to live modestly and you can help me with my work. I can carry on recording history as it happens, for my own interest.”
I thought about what he’d said and I liked the idea. I knew very little about history, but this wasn’t going to be dry dusty learning, spending hours in libraries or on the internet researching this or that person or event. This was going to be real experience.
“You’re on!” I told him. I shall be your trusty assistant. Where and when shall we start?”
“Well first of all, we can’t set foot outside the door looking like this. I suggest we adjourn upstairs and find something more suitable to wear and then we need to find ourselves somewhere to live. That is if you’re happy to stay here for a while, in 1888 I mean?”
“Seems as good a place as any to begin our new life.” I said, taking his hand and dragging him to the door and up the wide staircase.
It took ages to get kitted out. The wardrobes were overflowing with clothes, but in my size there were only two options. One dowdy black outfit and one dowdy brown one. None of the clothes were new. Again, to avoid standing out. I chose the brown one, because black isn’t a colour I wear well and was pleased to find that once out of the cupboard and in the light it was more coppery than brown and the fabric was a little shiny, catching the light in a nice way. There was some lace at the neck and at the end of the three quarter length sleeves. Jack’s knowledge of the times was very useful, because I wouldn’t have put on half of what I ended up wearing if it’d been left to me.
Everything was fiddly though and not easy to do up or undo in a hurry. The corset was clearly straight from a torture chamber, not from a fashion house and as for the knickers... well, they went down to my knees and had no gusset! Then there were all the underskirts and petticoats, some made from rough wool, some from cotton, not to mention the thick woolly stockings. I was well trussed up and felt twice my normal size, despite the corset from hell.
“Flippin’ ’eck! Perhaps we ought to choose a time when the clothes are more flattering and easier to breathe in.” I said, looking at him admiringly. He looked much more ‘right’ than I felt, even down to the pocket watch tucked into his waistcoat.
“Nice touch.” I told him, pointing to the watch.
He smiled at me and I realised it didn’t matter to him what I was dressed like. His look burnt me in the nicest way.
“This is how we do it.” he said, patting the watch. “This is our time machine. Look...”
He opened the watch and then pressed the button on the side, which flipped open the face and revealed a screen. As his fingers passed over it, different coloured lights flickered on and off.
“As you’ve seen, we don’t only move in time, we can change location too. We choose the year, the month and the general locality, then the watch automatically defaults to the nearest safe house. We maintain these places so that we can change clothes and prepare ourselves accordingly for the era.”
I looked up at him in amazement. “It’s such a tiny thing.” I said, smiling.
He nodded in agreement. “There is always one in the safe house that suits the period, so we just exchange it. That way it never looks out of place and the one we leave behind is destroyed with everything else in the fire. Clever piece of kit really,” he explained proudly. “It looks like metal, but it’s actually similar to what you know as plastic, with an organic electronic core”
I thought about the one he’d had on before a
nd remembered that it looked like a divers watch. I had to agree, it was very clever. I had no chance of understanding it technically, but it didn’t matter.
“What happens in the periods before watches were invented, I mean it would look odd wouldn’t it?” I asked uncertainly, a bit out of my depth.
“Yes, it most certainly would look odd. And not only that, you’d be showing the world a piece of the future, which we mustn’t do. For those periods it becomes a piece of jewellery or something else that can be easily carried without it looking out of place. However, in those cases there is only the return setting, to the place and time you left from. Normally that would be my time, but we will return to whenever we set out from.”
He looked a bit uncomfortable. Maybe he’d said too much, but anyway, I got the general idea and that was enough.
He reached for my hand and we went downstairs to the hallway, where I put my bonnet on and took a short cape and a thick shawl from the stand. He wrapped himself up in something more substantial and then with a flourish, put a bowler hat on his head. He’d also packed a small bag. At the time I didn’t know what was in it, but later he told me he had taken things from the house that we could sell, if and when we needed to, along with the stash of money. We opened the front door, took a deep breath and stepped out to start our life on the run in the winter of 1888.
The weekend had been good training for me, because we walked. In fact we walked flippin’ miles. The safe house was in Lewisham, not a place I knew and we walked all the way to London Bridge, so I was glad the boots I was wearing were sturdy. The weather was dry but cold and the sights and smells, mainly stinks I have to say, were incredible.
It’s funny; I’ve always thought of the past as being in black and white and in some ways, that day it was. Of course there was colour, but the trees were bare, the sky was grey and most of the people we saw were dressed in dark colours. The carriages were all black and the horses were mainly brown or grey, all covered in dark leather straps and stuff.
Given that Christmas was only a few days away, there wasn’t much to make me think of it. Some of the houses had holly wreaths outside, but there were no street decorations. Some of the windows of the shops we passed had made an effort, but most of them just gave Christmas a nod, nothing more. Very different from my time, when Christmas seemed to start soon after my birthday, at least as far as most shops were concerned, or Halloween at the latest.
Mind you, it’s never been my favourite time of year. The only good memories I have of Christmas time are the ones with Jack and maybe one or two with Nan. In our house it really was the season to be jolly, or in Mum’s case, blind drunk for three weeks and she was only home if I was very unlucky.
At lunchtime we bought some pies from a street seller. They weren’t bad and he seemed popular, because we had to queue, but I couldn’t have told you what meat it was supposed to be. Later, I paid a terrible price for that pie, but at the time it was kind of exciting. One of the things I couldn’t help noticing was that absolutely everyone was wearing a hat of some description. Another thing, apart from the general bad smell, was how grubby everything was; soot just clung to everything. Jack told me it was to do with the dirty coal burnt in the fireplaces, factories, trains and so on. He also told me that the smell was nothing compared to what it had been thirty years earlier, before the sewer system was built.
The noise was another surprise for me. In my mind the past was quieter, more peaceful if you like, but it was not the case. There was so much shouting and the traffic made such a racket. Jack explained that it was because of the cobbles and the horse’s hooves. The many wheels rattling past were made of wood and metal and any rubber tyres were solid. There seemed to be few rules of the road from what I could see and although there had never been any need, not to mention the money for me to learn how to drive, I knew all about the Highway Code. Nothing I saw made me think it had been invented yet.
We were extra careful whenever we needed to cross the road or when there was no pavement. There were dogs everywhere and so many things being sold from barrows. Everyone was shouting at the top of their voices, so as to be heard by any potential customers and I was surprised that people didn’t stare at us much. But there was so much to take in, so really I was the one doing all the staring.
It was late afternoon when we got to The Borough. We spotted a corner shop and went in to enquire if there were any rooms to be had in the neighbourhood. I was starting to feel light headed and despite the cold wind, I was sweating. I thought it was just all the excitement and overtiredness, but as Jack and the shopkeeper’s wife, Winnie Blunt as I was to find out later were talking, I suddenly came over really queer and started to faint.
She was a lovely lady, Winnie was. She made me sit down and brought me a drink of something. It was vile, but I managed to swallow it. She sent Jack to see someone in nearby Napier Street and when he came back it was all arranged; we had our first home. It wasn’t far, but I didn’t take much notice as we made our way there. It was furnished, which was just as well, because we had nothing except what we stood up in. We went up the stairs to the small bedroom overlooking the street, where Jack helped me get out of my clothes and passed me a bucket just in time.
It was only much later that I could fully appreciate what I’d put him through and how well he’d coped. I’ve never been so ill or so sick, never mind the rest, as I was that night. I truly thought I was dying and at times I would almost have been happy to go; that’s how bad real food poisoning is.
When the vomiting and everything was finally over, I gratefully slipped into unconsciousness and slept for twenty four hours straight. When I woke up I felt really empty and weak. Jack had been so worried, he’d sat by my side the whole time, but now I was awake he was babbling about how foolish he’d been, how he hadn’t thought it through and how I could have died and all that sort of nonsense. Then he stood up with an air of intention about him, took the watch out of his pocket and opened it.
“And just where and when do you think you’re going?” I asked.
“Just to get you some things from a pharmacy in your time. I’m not taking any more chances.”
I tried to throw the heavy covers off, but failed miserably.
“Oh no you don’t,” I shouted at him. I was really quite angry. “If we are going to do this thing, we are going to do it properly; no shimmering back and forth when the going gets tough. I promise I’ll be careful. There won’t be any more meat pies, that’s for sure. I just need to build up some defences, that’s all and I want nothing more than a nice hot cup of tea and maybe a bit of dry toast.”
We glared at each other. It was our first row.
“Let’s not make it easier for them to find us Jack. What if they see you? What happens to me then?” I pleaded with him, which was perhaps a little underhand of me as it put him in a bit of a fix, but it did the trick. I was in no fit state to shimmer anywhere, but I could see he was undecided. He was weighing up the risks of leaving me, against not getting the medicine he seemed to think I needed.
“Anyway, why didn’t the pie affect you?” I asked, not that I wanted him to suffer one single moment of what I’d been through.
“Um... inoculations...” he answered absentmindedly, obviously still trying to make his mind up. “Just tea and toast, are you sure?”
I knew I’d won. “It’ll be just what the doctor ordered, honestly Jack. I feel weak, but fine. I’m sure we can get everything we need for the moment from the corner shop.”
I crawled back under the covers and felt the roughness of the blankets against my skin. “Urgh, my god, no sheets!” I said crossly. “Tomorrow mister, we are going shopping!”
Chapter eight
Someone clever once said that the past is another country. Well, whoever he was, he must have been a time traveller. Mum and I never went on holiday and I’d never been out of England, not even to Scotland or Wales, let alone across the sea. But I’d listened to other people’s stories about
their travels.
Some of the staff at the home came from an agency and there had been this girl who’d travelled all summer long around the Greek Islands. She told us that despite the weather, the language and the traditions being different, a lot was the same but with little twists. She said that the food changed a little bit from island to island. Sometimes there was more of one ingredient, or one was missing, a bit more or less of a particular herb, or it was served slightly differently. But once you’d been there a while, in a funny way it was always familiar.
There were laundrettes, but you didn’t do your own washing. You left it there and someone did it for you, then you collected it the next day, all neatly folded and parcelled up. Shops were shops, wherever you went and language didn’t matter; they still wanted you to buy their stuff, even if you didn’t know what things were called. She also said that by the end of the week the people in Athens looked just as tired as the people in London.
In some ways, being in 1888 was like being in another country; one where they spoke English, but not quite the same as at home. It was a place where some things were instantly recognisable and others were a complete mystery until I got the hang of what was what. Then of course, it just became ordinary.
Jack told me that he’d picked this part of London because it was close to the docks and was full of people from other places, some hoping to stay and others who were just passing through. I wouldn’t look out of place and he was sure that no one would pay much attention to us. We’d also concocted a story for me. Nothing too wild, but one that would explain away any mistakes I might make. I’d spent most of my life in the Americas and had only been in London for a few months. I’d arrived with Jack, who I’d met on the way over and as most people didn’t travel that much, it was unlikely that I’d say anything that would give myself away.
Jack didn’t need a story, as I realised on our first shopping trip. When he spoke to anyone, he sounded just like them. In the same way that I understood everything he said to me, they seemed to as well. When I pointed this out to him over a cup of tea in a tea room, he grinned.
What about us? Page 7